Cancellation without penalty possible for call failures even after 6 months of subscription

Fair Trade Commission Approves Amendment to Consumer Dispute Resolution Standards

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunju Lee] From now on, customers will be able to cancel their mobile phone contracts without penalty fees for call quality issues occurring after six months of subscription.

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) finalized and approved the revised Consumer Dispute Resolution Standards at its plenary meeting, which will take effect from the 28th. The Consumer Dispute Resolution Standards are regulations established and enforced by the FTC to facilitate smooth resolution of disputes between consumers and businesses, serving as a guideline for dispute settlement.

The revision establishes criteria allowing consumers to cancel their contracts without penalty fees even after six months of subscription if call quality issues occur at their primary residence for reasons beyond the consumer’s responsibility. Call quality issues will be verified by engineers measuring the service at the consumer’s primary residence. Previously, consumers had to pay penalty fees if they canceled contracts due to call quality problems after six months, even if the issues were not their fault.

Additionally, the allowable cumulative service outage time for canceling high-speed internet services without penalty fees has been reduced from 48 hours per month to 24 hours per month. The criteria for compensation due to service suspension or outages have been shortened from a continuous 3 hours to 2 hours, and from 12 hours to 6 hours of monthly cumulative outage time. Compensation amounts have been increased from six times to ten times the outage time charges (including basic fees and additional usage fees).

A new quality warranty period has been established for major parts of electric vehicles and hydrogen cars, for which clear regulations were previously lacking. The warranty period is set to be the same as that for major parts of internal combustion engine vehicles, such as engines, which is within 3 years or 60,000 km. Until now, electric and hydrogen vehicles had no specific warranty period, so the general parts warranty period for internal combustion vehicles (2 years or within 40,000 km) was applied.

Postpartum care centers’ liability for user damages has been clarified as strict liability, regardless of fault, and the scope of users has been expanded from mothers and newborns to include pregnant women, infants, and their guardians. The standard terms and conditions for postpartum care centers also stipulate that businesses are liable for damages caused by infections or other harms during use, regardless of intent or negligence.

The FTC stated, “By reasonably improving the Consumer Dispute Resolution Standards in areas closely related to daily life, such as mobile communication services and the automobile industry, we expect to prevent unnecessary disputes in advance and enable consumers to receive prompt and appropriate relief when disputes arise in the future.”